A brief Tutorial - Some WIN9X Speed Optimisations

Can I make WIN9X boot up faster?

Last Updated 27 Jun 2002

Now that you have optimised your system, there are a few things that can be done to make WIN9X boot a little faster. Some of these things also have a side effect of eliminating junk that slows down the system when it is running.

Hardware.

• The faster the hardware, the sooner the boot process will be completed. Gains from this alone will be relatively small, unless you have a massive raw power upgrade. But the more RAM, you have, the relatively more time it takes to initialise and test.
• Ensure that you have the appropriate WIN9X 32 bit drivers for everything installed.

Software.

• Pretty pictures on the Desktop will rob you of Real Memory and Resources, and also slow the boot up process, especially if they are large. So will a pattern to a lesser extent. So will "Desktop Companions" that run around on your desktop looking cute. I personally prefer a nice neutral light grey desktop (approx 192,192,192).
• Look in SYSTEM.INI to see if anything is being loaded through there. Unless you need those things loaded, remark out or delete the contents of the Run and Load lines. If you need to run them occasionally, you can start them manually, from the Start Menu or via a Shortcut added to the Start Menu. And don't forget to check that any unwanted apps you want to delete completely are deleted properly with any uninstall routine to remove any special DLLs, Folders and Files, Registery entries, etc.
• Check to see if you have lots of Font Files that you don't need. You should keep the standard ones for WIN9X, and any that particular Apps need, but if you have been collecting lots of spurious Fonts, then prune them out.
• Apps such as MSOFFICE may place some links in the WINDOWS STARTUP folder. While these do speed up the opening of some MSOFFICE Apps, they can take quite a while to load during boot up. If you use MSOFFICE a lot, or every time you use the PC, and especially if it is one of the first things you use, then leave those links there, otherwise move them out of the folder. The subsequent first startup of the Apps such as WORD will just take a little longer the first time, but you will normally save a lot of Real Memory (and some time) by not loading that large DLL file each boot up.
• The GDI Resources can often be better used by not loading unnecessary programs at boot up. Shutting down a program does not always return all the graphics resources to the pool.

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